Gornyi Zhurnal about a supervisory control reform in Russia in the second half of the 19th–early 20th centuries

The article addresses a reform of supervisory control over private mining works and businesses in the Russian Empire in 1860–1910, covered in Gornyi Zhurnal. The reforming included foundation of a new professional industrial supervision institute. The guides became exclusively district mining engineers, college educated and experienced. Supervisory control embraced almost the whole empire divided into miningadministrative districts and regions. The range of functions of the district engineers expanded to include engineering supervision, control of assessment and collection of taxes, and keeping the peace and good fellowship between employees and employers in mines. At the same time, the law afforded the supervisory control to attempt to perform only indirect coercion excluding direct intervention into business affairs. The regulations issued by supervisory officers were recommendable as a rule, and could become obligatory for businessmen only upon judgement of higher authorities, police or judicial agencies. That rule remained inalterable for the whole life of the new supervisory control system which became the major result of reformation of the institutional framework for the mining industry in the second half of the 19th–early 20th centuries. Being the basic publication of the mining industry, Gornyi Zhurnal was a strenuous contributor to the development of the new supervisory control. The Journal performed an important function of informing readers representing the country’s mining community about the pace of reforming, and covered the readers’ reaction to changes.